A lady, who gives her name simply as Barbara, has spoken out about the time she tried to commit suicide – but quickly realised life was better than what was waiting for her on the other side.

In 1996, when Barbara was in college, she was suffering from depression and, when a man who she “had a crush on” rejected her advances, this was the tipping point for her. She said she decided taking her own life was her only option.

The young student took an overdose.

Describing when she closed her eyes, she said: “Hours passed.

“Everything seemed to be happening at once; or time stopped or lost all meaning.

“It was dim, weird, and unwelcoming.

“A clearly mystical or unearthly realm. It was a foreboding and eternal cosmic void.”

She added on the website NDERF – a domain which collects near death experiences: “All of a sudden, I found myself in a eerily strange place. In front of me, I saw an eternity of nothingness.

“I immediately decided that anything would be better than nothing.

“I remember the experience more accurately than other life events that occurred around the time of the experience.

However, doctors and medical professionals say that experiences such as these are not necessarily proof of an afterlife.

Dr Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone School of Medicine in New York City, told a recent Oz Talk: “People describe a sensation of a bright, warm, welcoming light that draws people towards it.

“They describe a sensation of experiencing their deceased relatives, almost as if they have come to welcome them. They often say that they didn’t want to come back in many cases, it is so comfortable and it is like a magnet that draws them that they don’t want to come back.

“A lot of people describe a sensation of separating from themselves and watching doctors and nurses working on them.”

Dr Parnia says there are scientific explanations for the reaction, and says seeing people is not evidence of the afterlife, but more likely the brain just scanning itself as a survival technique.

He said thanks to modern technology and science “death does not have to be limited to philosophy and religion, but it can be explored through science”.

“They can hear things and record all conversations that are going on around them.”